Big Mountain Riding

LU Old School

Part 1 – I have ridden at Candler’s Mountain, or Liberty Mountain as it is now called, since the mid-90’s. Back then it was a wild and woolly big mountain riding experience with heavily-eroded jeep trails, lots of year-round puddles and rocky trails that required zen-like handling skills. Not much pure singletrack, but some really technical ATV trails that rolled straight up and down the hills, leaving many a mountain biker’s lungs behind. The Gonzo factor came courtesy of shifting surfaces due to erosion, rock bars, ruts that were up to three-feet deep in places and red clay pools straight out of the most lurid ’50’s sci-fi. I rode through one such puddle when it couldn’t be avoided, and for the next several weeks, something ate slowly into my thigh, just above the knee. I thought I had encountered that late-90’s media darling flesh-eating bacteria, until it faded away and I still had flesh.

Trail features? We didn’t need any stinking features. We had banjo music in the hollers and drunk 4X4′ers to dodge.

The singletrack that did exist was cut in by Dr. David Horton and his ultra running followers, and was mostly not sustainable – nor fully rideable, for all but the most gifted riders – because it marched straight up and down the soft-soiled ridges, with only the rare and super tight switchback. It did keep the rider sharp, though. I have said for the last 10 years that the riding out on Liberty Mountain is on par with some of the best in the nation. The views may not be as stunning as the more well-known mountain bike towns – unless you find the cast-offs of decaying rural southern culture aesthetically pleasing – but the riding requires a range of skills that will prepare the all mountain rider for pretty much anywhere else.

Water biking on the pipeline trail, 1999

In the heigh day of mountain biking – back when Jerry Seinfeld hung a Klein mountain bike on the wall of his New York apartment and it was a new Olympic sport – LU had a Mountain Bike club and the trails got a lot of pedal-powered usage. The club and the local bike shop actually hosted several races there in the mid-90’s, the Redhawk Challenge I believe it was called.

However, over the years, the trails eroded further under ATV use, and most of the trail that even resembled singletrack in the ’90’s devolved into baby head littered swaths about 4-feet wide at their narrowest. A few new bootleg trails grew up thanks to the four-wheelers, but singletrack was getting hard to find on the mountain.

Fortunately, Lynchburg City Parks and Recreation had been hard at work with help from the Central Virginia Mountain Bike Association, and two other parks created more access to singletrack in Central Virginia. Blackwater Creek Recreational Area put in pavement, lights and other amenities that opened up this great mid-city greenway to much broader audience. Peaks View Park added a wonderfully tight and twisty set of trails that make great use of a few acres of hilly woods. In the first few years of the new millenium Candler’s Mountain had become largely an unspoken riding destination shared by assorted bikers looking for more altitude change and challenges. ©Big Mountain Riding

To be continued …

Doug Kruhm aboard the Trek 830 Mountain Track, near the Gun Range in 1996